1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a conveying device, especially a high-speed conveyor, as well as to improvements in belt conveyors. A high-speed conveyor is understood, here and in the rest of the present text, to be conveyors currently called "accelerated conveyors" which make it possible to carry persons, merchandise or the like along at speeds much higher than the speeds of the conventional conveyors, and especially belt conveyors. These high speeds do not permit the direct loading of the conveyor from a fixed support, since there is a risk of the persons or merchandise being carried along and finding themselves very much out of balance during their transistion from the fixed support to the conveyor. There is a risk of the same problems also occurring at unloading.
2. Description of the Prior Art
To remedy this drawback, it has frequently been proposed to produce conveying systems, for example for pedestrians, constituted by continuous mutually parallel conveyor belts of speeds increasing by degrees when passing laterally from one belt onto the other; the belts are of limited lengths, except for the fastest belt which has the length of the main conveyor, proper. The assembly of lateral belts of limited length constitutes, as the case may be, a lateral loader or unloader (accelerator or decelerator); when, a conveyor for pedestrians is involved, the pedestrians have to take the initiative to pass from one belt to the other, in a time which is necessarily limited since the lateral belts are of much smaller length than the conveyor itself, with all the risks of impact on fixed parts or on other pedestrians. Moreover, this system takes up a great deal of space.
In fact, up to the present day only conveyors with two parallel belts running the whole of the length of the conveyor have been constructed (Chicago Exhibition of 1893 and Paris Exhibition of 1900). Moreover, they involved endless conveyors in a closed loop, thus avoiding the problems of impacts with fixed end elements.
It appears advantageous, to use to the full the possibilities offered by modern conveyor belts of flexible materials, or even by roller conveyors, to produce accelerator loading systems and decelerator unloading systems "end on", that is to say in the alignment of the end parts of the conveyor, thus avoiding the risks due to a lateral loading. Moreover, it will be advantageous, in the case of a pedestrian, for the pedestrian to be able to travel the whole length of the conveyor without letting go of a hand rail element, which is synchronized with the floor which will guide the pedestrian from one end to the other.
It will also be advantageous, in order to use the belt to the full extent while producing very significant savings, to make use of the same belt to produce the output conveyor and the return conveyor, everywhere where such would be useful, and in particular in the case of conveyors for pedestrians called "accelerated rolling pavements".
The first result, namely the end-on loading and unloading, will be obtained by the presently disclosed invention.
The second result, namely the presence of a hand rail synchronous at every point with the opposite element on the floor of the conveyor, will be obtained by the known means, such as disclosed in French Patent Nos. 2,274,523 and 2,431,075 from the same inventor Pierre PATIN.
The third result, namely the use of the same flexible belt in the two directions of travel will also be obtained by particular arrangements and shapes of the drums and end members described herein.